Consider this my official guest post on the demise of guest posting. Yes, this also makes me part of the reason why (as Matt says) we can’t have nice things in the SEO community.

Guest blogging is a tactic, not strategy

Let’s start off with the word “tactic.” I chose that word on purpose. We’ve all seen the plethora of “guest blogging strategy” posts and articles. I want to make one thing clear–guest posting is not a strategy. It’s a tactic. There’s a difference.
A strategy involves a long term plan and a goal. A tactic is merely one action that helps accomplish that strategy. I’ll get more into this in a minute.

It seems whenever an SEO tactic becomes popular, Google decides to take action on it. Why is that? Conspiracy theorists will be quick to update their usual argument about Google hating SEO and trying to sell more adwords and whatnot. Ignore them. Google doesn’t hate SEO. Google hates automated tactics that provide little value to actual website visitors such as creating links and content just to increase search rankings.

SEOs ruined guest blogging, not Matt Cutts

The reason Google is taking action on guest posting is because we ruined it. We ruined it the same way we ruined meta keywords, and directories, and press releases, and blogrolls, and widgets, and infographics, and link exchanges, and article submissions, and forums, and comments, and wikipedia, and (on second thought I won’t mention this tactic, it still works,) and reviews, and ratings, and Pinterest, and, well you get the picture.

We ruined guest posting just like we ruined everything that came before it and just like we’ll probably ruin whatever comes after it. It’s moments like this I’m glad Twitter isn’t a ranking factor, because I’m sure we’d ruin that too.

[Rhea note: actually, SEOs DID ruin Twitter when it and all other major social platforms were forced to implement nofollows!]

We went too “all-in” with guest blogging, and now we’re paying the price. For years it’s been the only link building tactic talked about at conferences and events. We even guest blogged about the best methods for finding blogs to guest blog on. Guest Blogging pretty much replaced the word link building in the same way that “[odd number] things [current trending topic] can teach us about [SEO|ORM|PPC|Mobile|Social]” replaced blog headlines.

Matt’s post shouldn’t come as a surprise. Anybody who’s been around SEO long enough knows that eventually all tactics are abused enough to find themselves in Google’s crosshairs.

SEOs need to fix our strategy, not the tactics

Guest blogging isn’t the problem though–we’re the problem. We can debate tactics all we want, but nothing is going to change. It’s the strategy that’s broken, and we need to address that.

It’s time our industry took a step back from the “what” and started taking a longer look at the “why” of SEO tactics. It’s time we put down our checklists and ranking factors and correlation studies and focused on our overall strategy and goals.

How SEOs brought the decay and fall of directories

How can we forget Danny Sullivan’s famous rant about directories and link building? If you missed it before, I’ll summarize:

A long time ago Google told us to go get directory links. At that time people actually used things like DMOZ or the Yahoo! directory to find sites, so it was good advice. The message was “go get your site linked where people will see it,” but all we heard was the word “directory.” Instead of trying to get our site mentioned in places where people actually went, SEOs started creating tons of directories nobody ever visited solely for the purpose of submitting our sites to them.

Directories weren’t the problem at all–SEOs just got the message wrong.

How SEOs brought the decay and fall of press releases

Sadly, we repeated the same process with press releases. The original message of “put out a press release, and if a journalist picks it up you’ll get lots of newspaper links” somehow got lost as we created programs to submit press releases to thousands of press release sites that have never been visited by an actual journalist.

(Tip: when the homepage of a site is geared toward getting you to submit and not toward actual site visitors, it’s not a good SEO strategy.)

Surely we learned after the PR backlash right? Nope.

How SEOs brought the decay and fall of forums and comments

We did the same with forum links and comment links. But we learned from that right? Of course not.

How SEOs brought the decay and fall of infographics

Like a moth to a flame we went full speed ahead into infographics. Sure, they started out useful. You’d see an infographic about population breakdowns that linked back to the census report or one about test scores that linked to some educational study. These were awesome and got tons of traffic. They were also relevant.

Somehow though, we forgot about the words “useful” and “relevant” and focused only on the word “infographic.” It’s almost as if we thought that somehow being attached to an infographic made spammy off topic links acceptable. Pretty soon we saw infographics about the best places to live in America that linked to play-poker-online-for-free-viagra.info

[Rhea note: actually, that domain is still available. Score!]

How SEOs brought the decay and fall of guest blogging

Then came guest blogging. At first, many in the community were saying things like “this can’t be ruined, can it?” “Nobody would be stupid enough to mix in total spam on their own blog or put their name on it would they?”

No, they weren’t that dumb. They were dumber.

Not only did people start posting utter crap, but they even created blogs that nobody ever read for the sole purpose of posting utter crap. Then, they automated it.

I’m pretty sure “automatically generate articles and send them to scraped email addresses until somebody posts them” is NOT what Matt meant when he used words like “high quality,” “original,” relevant”, and “value” in his original condonement of guest blogging.) In his condemning post, Cutts used the word “decay” and given our history with SEO tactics, I can’t really think of a better way to describe it.

It’s not the tactic that matters, it’s the strategy.

If your strategy is to expose your site to a relevant audience by creating useful content and connections, you can’t go wrong. If your strategy is to simply change the method by which you automatically acquire low-quality, irrelvant, and high-risk links, you’ll end up right back here reading this same rant from me in a different medium.

Spammy guest blogging is dead, not guest posting

Guest blogging can still work. You wouldn’t turn down a column on CNN or an editorial in the Huffington Post if they said you couldn’t have a dofollow link would you? Of course not, because those places send traffic – and that’s the key. It’s about the audience, not the HTML.

This is a guest post. You’re clearly reading it because I (hopefully) have something interesting to say. There’s probably a link to my personal website or twitter account (I’m not sure, I didn’t ask for anything) but that wasn’t the purpose of this post. The purpose of this post was to share my thoughts and insights with an audience who might find it useful – and that strategy won’t ever die.

The same is true for press releases. Those simply writing them for the links from press release sites won’t see any benefit, but those writing press releases that actually get picked up by journalists will see huge traffic influxes.

Infographics? Same thing. If you’re summarizing your data and linking back to that data – well then any site including your graphic will gladly send their readers over to view the source of that data and learn more.

Directories? Go ask the businesses listed in Angie’s list or APlaceForMom if directories are dead. They might not be getting rankings from them, but they’re getting phone calls.

Link building leads to ranking. Ranking leads to more traffic. That’s always how I’ve viewed it, yet some of us got so caught up in the link building tactics and ranking metrics that we forgot traffic was the actual goal. So yeah, these tactics may be dead from a link building, Google manipulating, Pagerank point of view – but if you approach them solely from a “send me more visitors” point of view, then they remain strong and viable.

Going forward I’m sure Google will have no problem finding guest blogs and ignoring their links and I’m sure several SEOs will find creative ways to disguise their guest blogs and manipulate Google’s author trust–just as I’m sure this won’t be the last guest post about guest posting.

Don’t worry though, I’m confident another SEO tactic will soon take its place; and it’ll only be a matter of time before we ruin that too.

]]>http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/a-guest-post-on-the-death-of-guest-posting/feed/29Survey Results: Educational Background of Digital Marketers & SEOs Revealedhttp://outspokenmedia.com/seo/survey-results-educational-background-of-digital-marketers-seos-revealed/
http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/survey-results-educational-background-of-digital-marketers-seos-revealed/#commentsWed, 16 Oct 2013 16:57:44 +0000http://outspokenmedia.com/?p=17146Read More]]>Ever wonder how most of the industry stumbled into this field? I certainly have, because I’m always looking for exceptional team members and scaling digital marketing education in a small agency is one of the biggest challenges I face as a business owner.

Wonder no longer–I surveyed the industry and we had a fantastic response!

Dear SEOs/Marketers, have 2 min to take a quick 5-question survey on industry backgrounds? http://t.co/QFWM1lD3kL TY and plz share!

How long have you been performing SEO services (for your own or client sites)?

What is your highest level of education?

If you received a degree, what field was this in?

Did you take any online marketing, SEO, digital marketing, or related courses in school?

If you answered “yes” to the question above, please briefly describe the course, program, certification, or degree you received training in.

I collected the most relevant course titles, degrees, and classes shared by respondents:

“Digital Marketing” module in degree

Full Sail’s Internet Marketing MS program

BCIT – Direct Response Marketing Program

eCommerce master degree

class in eCommerce at Virginia Tech

Internet marketing course (x3)

Digital entrepreneurship

Internet marketing course during MBA (x2)

E-Business during MBA

Postdegree in digital marketing and communication

Digital marketing course

UGA New Media Institute Certification Program

University module on online marketing principles

The best responses that seem to sum up the extent of everyone’s exposure to digital marketing and/or SEO during school:

“I took an internet marketing class as part of my undergraduate coursework. It basically involved me going to class and listening to a guy ramble on about his experience running a failed ecommerce website. Dabbled a little in analytics, but didn’t learn much.”

“I was doing a double major in English and business. I had a single course on online marketing. I dropped out when I realized I could learn more applicable things online for free.”

“The internet did not exist when I was in school… “”cut and paste”” was done with a scalpel and hot wax.”

“Yes, but barely. There was some online media and HTML courses, but nothing directly correlated with SEO or Internet marketing.”

What I found interesting is how the comments often led to folks discussing their own independent study:

What does all of this mean?

Well, I’ll talk about it from the point of view of a boutique, digital marketing agency owner:

Clients demand great work, but perhaps even more important is that we stay ahead of the industry when it comes to the services we offer. If I can’t find qualified candidates and continually train them, we’re going to get left behind as link development or online reputation management best practices evolve. You will, too.

So, do you have your training process worked out? Or, do you have a magical means of finding qualified talent?

After surveying the industry, I was fascinated by the diversity in our educational backgrounds. Yes, there are some common elements, but it’s exactly what I thought–most of us fell into this field from other disciplines. Less than ten percent of digital marketers had ANY training on the subject in school!

And my favorite lesson–in the absence of traditional education, he who trains most efficiently will rise to the top.

That last part is pretty important to me, because I think (vain moment) that I’m a pretty damn good trainer. Don’t believe me? Check out the deck I created for the meet up at the end of the post. I’ll let my past team members share their thoughts on the subject.

Why does this matter? We’re about to ramp up the business heavily in 2014. It’s time to scale, and scaling digital marketing education is at the top of my mind, because I refuse to compromise on quality or our custom, in-house approach to the work. Unfortunately, training takes time, but that’s time I’ll carve out knowing it means we maintain team happiness, client satisfaction, and industry recognition. Hopefully, you’re thinking about the same things as a consultant, agency, in-house marketer, or executive.

]]>http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/survey-results-educational-background-of-digital-marketers-seos-revealed/feed/1Google Wants You to Out Good Sites. Really!http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/google-wants-you-to-out-good-sites-really/
http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/google-wants-you-to-out-good-sites-really/#commentsThu, 29 Aug 2013 15:52:03 +0000http://outspokenmedia.com/?p=16944Read More]]>Yesterday, Google’s Head of Web Spam, Matt Cutts, shared a link to a simple Docs survey where they’re asking webmasters to report high-quality small sites that you think should rank better. Yes, you heard that right. They want to know about GOOD sites!

If there's a small website that you think should be doing better in Google, tell us more here: https://t.co/s80BibIBhN

If you’re like the Outspoken Media team, this was met with a company-wide, “wha?!”

While Google has been working hard over recent years to make it easier for the Web Spam team to connect with and inform webmasters, they’re usually looking for help outing bad sites. Whether it’s more support for reconsideration requests, new language on link schemes, or the recently released (then revoked, then re-released) Manual Actions report in Webmaster Tools.

For years we’ve debated the issue of size and brand as it relates to rankings and it’s interesting to see that Google is now soliciting advice from the masses to test the quality of the algorithm. The debate has raged since 2008 (and before). I put the “big business vs little guy” graphic together (thanks Todd for sharing it so long ago) to help sort through some hypocritical assumptions on Google’s part when it comes to website behavior. We’re used to the perception that big brands get away with murder while small businesses suffer, but I’ve always believed that when it comes to the algorithm it really is a matter of brand signals versus the actual size of the brand. The more sites behave like actual businesses and invest in brand development, the more they’ll align with the direction Google is going with quality signals for greater search rankings.

“only 30% of SEOs believe web site size does not matter in terms of rankings.”

At first we didn’t believe the survey was legit, because it’s so simple. How could Google possibly review all of the submissions they’ll undoubtedly receive? But truthfully, how many webmasters feel confident enough in their site’s backlink profile to submit?

Will you?

I know there are plenty of webmasters who believe in the legitimacy of their link building practices, but we typically find a history riddled with old, highly questionable links. At Outspoken, we work hard to rehab those efforts, but the threshold of what’s acceptable is changing daily with the most recent updates affecting press releases, guest posts, advertorials, and infographics.

It’s been interesting to see the reaction of fellow SEO consultants and webmasters and I’ll be curious to see what comes next from the Web Spam team. Do they feel like the algorithm is doing a good job and they want validation? Or are they as worried as the 70% of SEOs who feel that the algorithm really is favoring brands?

]]>http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/google-wants-you-to-out-good-sites-really/feed/9SEOmoz Launches Fresh Web Explorer: Brand Management Game Changerhttp://outspokenmedia.com/seo/seomoz-launches-fresh-web-explorer-brand-management-game-changer/
http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/seomoz-launches-fresh-web-explorer-brand-management-game-changer/#commentsThu, 07 Mar 2013 18:21:53 +0000http://outspokenmedia.com/?p=16817Read More]]>I had a chance to speak with Matthew Brown in email after yesterday’s launch of the Fresh Web Explorer from SEOmoz. It’s rare that we write a product review on Outspoken Media, but being both a link builder and an online reputation manager, I felt it was important that I speak up since this new tool combines the best of both worlds! Tracking backlinks and tracking brand mentions are usually very separate affairs. With the Fresh Web Explorer you get the best of both backlinks and mentions or co-citations in one place. The only hitch—it’s just from the past four weeks, so grab your data and check frequently! It also does not appear to include social media mentions, which frankly helps with some of the noise you get in other tools like Radian6 (unless you intentionally block micromedia from displaying in your dashboard).

To use Fresh Web Explorer, you do have to be an SEOmoz Pro member. If you have an account, just enter the phrase you want to track mentions of or the URL:

Google Alerts can be buggy, there’s a delay, and there’s often a lot of junk that gets shared. The Fresh Web Explorer (from all of our testing so far) appears to be very accurate. Only in a few instances were mentions not on the page, but these were for low-quality scraper sites that are rotating content frequently.

Q&A with Matthew Brown of SEOmoz

Do you have any pending features you can share with everyone?

Our big features that we’re working on currently: Improving the quality and quantity of feeds, improving the feed modeling, and working on integration in SEOmoz Pro campaign products. There’s some other surprises in store as well ;)

Do you know how the Freshscape index stacks up against other social listening tools? Are you the biggest and best when it comes to feed count?

It’s early to measure ourselves against competitors, either in terms of feed count or quality. We’re seeing a bit of evidence that we’re consistent with services like Google Trends. For example, here’s a search that a user found for ‘Pistorius': http://i.imgur.com/eMIsuC9.png – It’s tough to measure against Google’s opaque 1-100 score, but the trendlines match up reasonably well. We’d never expect them to completely match, but the timing and spikes should look similar.

What’s the best way for the community to request additional feeds? I know Radian6 allows for a list of other URLs to search for a given dashboard.

We’re already looking at mechanisms with which feeds can be added. It’s high up on the feature list.

When trying to exclude a branded URL, what’s the best route? Tried using something like [seomoz -url:seomoz.org], but this still returns SEOmoz URLs. That’s not the exact query I used, but basically, a client URL wasn’t getting removed from mentions when I tried using “-url:”

That’s high up in the queue. We wanted to get a high-performing beta release out to our customers before adding on features, which will no doubt require extensive testing.

13 Ways to Use Fresh Web Explorer

After poking around the Fresh Web Explorer, here are a few methods I immediately found opportunities for with each of our clients that all online marketers can add to their tool set as well:

Reclaim backlinks. Sometimes people link to the wrong URL. It happens! Find those mentions and reach out to request an update on the backlink.

Build relationships. Use Fresh Web Explorer to identify bloggers who may have mentioned your product, service, or site organically, and now you can thank them for that mention and start to build a real relationship. Ask them how they found out about your brand and if they have any other experiences with it. Ask them if they have feedback on how to make your site or services stronger. Avoid asking them for a link—that’s rude. Befriend them, then ask for the link!

Respond to customer service issues. Customer service doesn’t have to be about something negative, but I found a client mention where the blogger said they were eagerly awaiting the catalog, but hadn’t received it, yet. This is a perfect opportunity to get them a catalog (and fast) with a personal follow-up or note to thank them for the mention. Don’t ask for anything, just go out of your way to be human. I guarantee this will have positive results for SEO as well.

Spot trends and seasonal change. Matthew mentioned that the Fresh Web Explorer’s only real competitor might be Google Trends. You can do a phrase search to identify recent seasonal mentions and sources. This is a great opportunity to identify potential ideas for content, too.

Conduct a competitive analysis/needs assessment. Just like the trend/seasonal change analysis, you can add competitor URLs and track the number of backlinks and citations they accumulated during a peak busy season such as Valentine’s Day or Spring Break. You can use this to inform your SEO and social media strategies, but most important as a way to demonstrate to your superiors the missed opportunities!

Build collateral for your brand. Sometimes your customers take better quality pictures of your products than you do. They don’t always take the time to share those with you, but they will share them with their community. Locate amazing reviews of your products online and request to host those pictures on your site as real product shots from customers or as a featured post on your blog.

Find customer reviews/testimonials. Just like collateral, customers don’t always share their opinions, especially if it’s positive. Yes, that’s right, your customers will usually only share a life-changing positive experience or a truly awful experience, but they’re not going to go out of their way to share a normal experience. They will however mention to their friends online that they received a sweater in the mail and it was perfect for their new spring wedding dress. Reach out and ask them if you can post their review on your site or blog!

Understand social reach. Google Analytics’ new social reports only pick up actual URL shares on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Google+ and even through services like Pocket. Unfortunately, the Fresh Web Explorer doesn’t appear to pull these social mentions, but it will pull mentions from other social sources (i.e. blogs) where content is getting produced as part of a social outreach campaign.

Audit brand usage. This can simply be about discovery of brand mentions and how the brand is being used or for the link builders among us… this opens a door to communicate with the blogger/media outlet about the proper usage of the brand. This may actually garner some great backlinks or fixes to a link that might not point to the ideal location.

Audit other department/agency activities. Work with/at an enterprise-level organization? You’re probably not the only service provider. Audit outreach strategies of other SEO companies, link builders, PR teams, and social media teams. You might find some really insightful or truly terrifying campaigns.

Find paid links. You know what really bugs me? A client who says they no longer engage in paid link activity, but they do! Use the Fresh Web Explorer to identify potential paid links and open the door to a serious conversation about the risk/reward of this method.

Audit sponsored posts. Just like paid links, sometimes a particular section of an organization may be engaged in sponsored posts without disclosure or nofollows appended to the URLs. This could seriously hurt your website if Google spots these posts even though they’re just smart branding in the eyes of the campaign manager. Find problems before they become disasters!

Find negative SEO. I haven’t seen a ton of this in the wild, but just like paid link identification, you can use the Fresh Web Explorer to find folks who may be building low-quality, high-risk backlinks to your site in the hopes that it will hurt your performance.

Additional reading on the Fresh Web Explorer:

Have questions about the Fresh Web Explorer? Hit up Matthew on Twitter! For real, they want feedback.

]]>http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/seomoz-launches-fresh-web-explorer-brand-management-game-changer/feed/2Clients: Ask the Wrong Questions, They Dohttp://outspokenmedia.com/seo/clients-ask-the-wrong-questions-they-do/
http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/clients-ask-the-wrong-questions-they-do/#commentsFri, 15 Feb 2013 17:04:34 +0000http://outspokenmedia.com/?p=16766Read More]]>Sometimes we care about the wrong things, especially when it comes to an SEO audit, or link building. We’ve trusted the wrong company and been burned, or heard enough war stories that we’re super cautious about who we’re going to get into bed with for our search marketing needs. How do you find an SEO consultant you can trust? More often than not you’re asking the wrong questions and stumbling on the self-proclaimed “best SEO companies,” but missing the real experts. Michael Cottam brings us a guest post on the five questions you should NOT be asking your potential SEO agency.

I’m frequently running into new prospective clients who’ve embraced the dark side of SEO. It’s like they’ve begun their Jedi training under Lord Vader, instead of Yoda. Then like Anakin Skywalker, they got their arm cut off by a penguin (take another look at Christopher Lee as Count Dooku, and tell me I’m wrong).

So they come to me wary, wanting to ask all the right questions so that their next SEO expert doesn’t cause them to get their other arm lopped off too. But, their understanding of SEO from their previous consultant–master of the Dark Side–has them asking all the wrong questions.
Here’s my list of my 5 least favorite pre-engagement questions from potential clients who are recovering from a past SEO relationship gone bad.

1) “Can you show me an example of an SEO audit you did for another customer?”

Two words: client confidentiality. If you use a real document from a past client, you’re going to have to redact much of it.

You really don’t want to share even a checklist, because if you’re like me, you’ve compiled your list from a number of sources and ideas over the years, and it’s your intellectual property. You can also pretty much guarantee that anything you share with a client prior to an engagement is going to be shared with the other consultants as the client tries to gauge who’s the best (“here’s what this other consultant said…what do YOU think?”).

You can counter this by saying:

Your best practices list is your intellectual property, and the recommendations you made for any other client is their intellectual property. Share with them a testimonial from a client for whom the site audit recommendations had a substantial impact on their site traffic and/or conversions instead.

2) “Do you have a list of keywords you recommend based on your research?”

Keep in mind where this came from: their last SEO company provided them with a list of the top 3,000 target keywords they should focus on, along with 19 unintelligible metrics for each keyword. And just because they didn’t understand it in the slightest (nor did their last SEO company), this doesn’t mean the sheer weight of the document didn’t impress them.

Keyword research is an important and non-trivial part of any good SEO campaign. It’s more than just the search volumes; it’s the mix of that plus seeing what KINDS of results (organic, local, local universal, shopping, video, image, news, etc.) show for each term, combined with how competitive the term is in each of those kinds of results that figure highly on page one.

If you’re going do it for free as part of your quote, you’re either a fool, or you probably haven’t done enough research. And don’t think you can provide that for free up front and make it up in the overall bid. I’ve had multiple clients take another company’s keyword research from their quote and hand it to me, telling me they don’t need me to do that bit because they’ve already got it… here you go. I’d redo it anyway, because I don’t trust that the other company looks at all the factors I look at.

Your answer, then?

Keyword Research is a critical part of any SEO analysis, and it should be beyond the scope of what can be done in an initial quote. It’s worth explaining a bit about the importance of competitive analysis when choosing your targets.

3) “Can you give me a quote for monthly SEO services that guarantee top rankings for the most highly searched terms for our industry?”

Guarantee: the 4-letter word of the SEO industry.

First, there’s no reasonable guarantee in this business; there’s always a competitor or two (or ten) out there who’s hired someone as good as you to do the same thing for their client.

Second, the client here has been taught the wrong goal: rankings are a FACTOR for online success, but there is more to rankings than that:

Are you getting the author’s photo to appear via rel=author? This is worth an increase in click-through rate of 30% to as much as 150% or more

Once the user clicks through, do they convert into a customer? Or bounce back to the SERPs and click on your competitor?

Third, the opportunity for the client might not be in getting traffic from the most highly-searched terms: their opportunity for more traffic, conversions, etc. might be in the long-tail. For instance, by tuning their templates that generate their 10,000 product pages, instead of their home page, they could increase traffic. The question the client SHOULD be asking is more along the lines of something like this:

“What would it cost to grow my online sales by x%, and how long do you think it would take to get there?”

You’re not going to be able to guarantee anything, but a quick look at their link profile, the search volumes for a few obvious terms, and the link profiles of those companies in the top spots on page one today is enough to give you an idea whether their goal is realistic (easy or hard). This will also tell you if their goals are achievable by quick on-page fixes or a long-term online marketing and link building grind.

I actually had a client who came to me, ready to spend a respectable amount on search marketing, but every single term I could come up with for their product came up with virtually no measurable search volume AND the competition was intense. The client was up against big-box stores with a physical presence. It seems that while it was a reasonably common and popular product, it wasn’t one people were buying or even researching online. It was something people buy in-person, where they can touch and feel it. I had to advise them NOT to use my SEO services (or anyone else’s), but to spend their money on more traditional marketing and presence in brick-and-mortar retailers. Perhaps I missed some brilliant off-the-wall search term… and if some other SEO consultant discovers it and leads them to success, well, certainly they deserve the “win” and I should hang my tail in shame.

4) “How many links are you going to build for me per month and what will it cost per link?”

To paraphrase Obi Wan Kenobi: These are not the links you’re looking for.

And if this is how you’re going to measure your SEO success, I can tell you what it’s going to cost you–80% of your traffic from a Penguin penalty. When it comes to Google spotting buckets of cheap, easy-to-get links, let’s just say this: the Death Star is fully operational.

A better question might be:

“What kinds of links are you going to get for me, and what’s the cost in time and money like for each of those kinds of links?”

Your answer will involve different kinds of outreach, content-creation effort, sponsorships/donations to charities, a real PR campaign that inspires real reporters/bloggers to write about specific important things the client has done, etc.

In fact, any question that starts with “Can you guarantee…”–well, this is like asking a quarterback if he can guarantee that they’ll win the Super Bowl before signing his contract. You can’t guarantee anything. The client’s competitors are engaging with other search marketers, and some of them may be even more talented than you are.

When faced with this question, I like to respond that I’ll guarantee to do my best to grow their business at a reasonable cost, and like the quarterback, I can point to my past successes as a likely indicator of success with my new “team.”

So, to answer this:

Of course, you can price your services any way you’d like. The key is to get the client to understand that a more meaningful way to measure your impact is going to be in things like new customers, revenue, and traffic. Most importantly you want them to understand that rankings are merely one factor in a much bigger equation.

5) “Do you do pay-for-performance? We want to structure the contract in such a way that we only pay if we get results.”

In principle, this isn’t unreasonable or really all that problematic, but we all know that in general it takes a fair bit of time to see results for most of the SEO tactics we employ. Occasionally we’ll have a client with a rockin’ backlink profile, and all we have to do is tweak some page titles and some internal anchor text here and there, and within a month we’re golden. For the majority of sites, the results are going to come from things that take months: content generation that THEN needs to be promoted, and THEN develops links that will start taking effect a month after that.

If your cash flow allows it, offering the client a 10-20% holdback on the invoices until traffic rises X% from the start of the project is a way to give that client an assurance that you’re confident in your abilities, and have some skin in the game. Be aware of the risks here though. Anything from an algorithm change by Google, or significant progress by their competitors, or a late effect of some shady link building by their last SEO company could bite you back there in that dark place under your Jedi robes.

If you offer a hold-back based on performance, you need to be prepared to lose that portion of the invoice for factors that are truly beyond your control. As Yoda says: “Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.”

Stepping Back A Bit

As you deal with questions like this from prospective clients, you need to remember that the clients have been CONDITIONED by their past experiences. They’re used to easy wins from (relatively) cheap tricks. And, they’re probably thinking that they’ve just been burned by someone with the same job title you have. You may very well be in a situation where you’re never going to make them really happy, and the job is more trouble and stress for you and your team than it’s worth.

]]>http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/clients-ask-the-wrong-questions-they-do/feed/16The New SEO Glossary: Say Goodbye to Link Condoms & Juicehttp://outspokenmedia.com/seo/the-new-seo-glossary-say-goodbye-to-link-condoms-juice/
http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/the-new-seo-glossary-say-goodbye-to-link-condoms-juice/#commentsWed, 12 Dec 2012 17:43:31 +0000http://outspokenmedia.com/?p=16596Read More]]>The SEO industry is full of acronyms, abbreviations, and industry-wide inside jokes. There are other publications that have extensivelycovered what SEO industry jargon means and how to interpret it–that isn’t my goal here.

The elephant in the room for any SEO firm or individual consultant is that SEO has a massive reputationproblem. The issue is part lack of regulation, part scale, and part perception. As an industry we can’t hunt down every person who claims they’re an SEO who will get you “first in the search engines, guaranteed!” We can’t stop the mountains of spam that fall into small business owner’s email inboxes daily. The Internet is a very large place, with a lot of hidey-holes.

One of the few things that we can control as an individual or company is how we talk about ourselves, how we speak to our clients, and how we speak to other industry professionals. When your industry is the Internet, nothing is private; the only face that we have is our public one.
Allow me to step on the soapbox here, just a little bit, and say–as someone who has studied the English language extensively–what you say and how you say it matters. “RCS” or “link juice” may be a term that will catch a person’s ear and become “buzzworthy”, but it is not a term that will leave potential clients impressed with your authority, knowledge, or business acumen. We need to elevate our language as well as bridge the disconnect between Internet and traditional marketing.

Here are a few ways to sound like the more mature SEO industry we’ve become:

Black hat, white hat, gray hat, and everything in between: Let’s stop talking about hats and instead discuss risk tolerance. Are you using high-risk link SEO tactics, low-risk or something in the middle? Hats make us sound like evil villains not savvy marketers.

Link juice: This term has made me wince since I started in the industry. Link “juice” is the associative authority of a link. Call it link authority, or call it passed link value. We want to explain our industry and how it works while still sounding professional.

Link condom: I hadn’t actually heard this before until Rhea mentioned it when I was initially brainstorming–a link condom is the rel=”nofollow” attribute, which as SEOs know, kills any passed link value. (See, look at me, following my own advice!) We don’t need sexual connotations to get attention, SEO is an established enough industry that (most) people listen to us without the shock and awe routine.

Link love: Quite the opposite of a link condom, a “loved” link is a link to an external site that is fully followed. While this is a term I use internally with my co-workers, I would say a more appropriate term to whomever you’re reporting to would be “citation” or “co-citation.”

Linksploitation: (from SEO-Theory)This is targeting links in a “formulaic process according to precise criteria.” Don’t use made up words! A more appropriate term would be “targeted link building.”

RCS (Real Company Stuff or Real Company S**t): While it may have been a trending hashtag on Twitter during Mozcon and it’s easy to throw around the virtual water cooler, RCS is a very industry specific term. It’s more than fine to use internally, but when walking into a Fortune 100 boardroom “RCS” is tough to explain quickly. Use marketing terms that resonate better like an integrated marketing campaign. Avoid unnecessary barriers to understanding when you’re speaking with a client or potential client.

Splog: Can we stop word mashing? Especially random words with blog? “Vlog” should be avoided, too. A splog is a spam blog. Someone who doesn’t know what “splog” is will probably go somewhere at least vaguely sexual. Even the impression of derogatory language comes off as unprofessional. Clean up the connotations and call it a low-quality blog.

Linkerati: This is an old school SEO term that few new marketers hear anymore. The linkerati are the people who control web properties that you want to get links from. Today the majority of us just say, “link prospects” or “potential contacts” and let’s keep it that way.

Blacklisted or penalty: Neither of these terms are inherently wrong, but they’re used incorrectly everyday. Let’s be more cautious when talking about what may be happening with a site. Blacklisted means the site is literally out of the index. A penalty may be manual or algorithmic and causes a noticeable drop in rankings. Not every site that experiences a loss has been blacklisted or penalized.

SEO is a maturing industry, and our language should mature along with it. While I have no inherent objections to most of this terminology (expect for “link juice”) the industry reputation is what it is partially because all of this SEO jargon alienates those who want to educate themselves. Satire has its place, but we seriously need to re-vamp our communication habits. While so many of us are advocating the importance of understanding a client’s brand message and aligning our work with other departments, we are helping to create and establish the divide between SEO and traditional marketers when we use the expressions that we do.

We need to present a uniform front, eat a slice of humble pie, and acknowledge the inheritance of the SEO industry. We are marketers. Marketing was around long before the Internet was a glimmer of an idea. Why are we not using marketing language with more frequency? To really move forward, SEO needs to speak the language of traditional marketing and branding, not the other way around.

]]>http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/the-new-seo-glossary-say-goodbye-to-link-condoms-juice/feed/483 Common Roadblocks to “RCS”http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/3-common-roadblocks-to-rcs/
http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/3-common-roadblocks-to-rcs/#commentsTue, 27 Nov 2012 16:38:09 +0000http://outspokenmedia.com/?p=16436Read More]]>Due to Google’s Penguin and Panda updates, SEOs shifted their focus from traditional link-building schemes to more robust content-based search strategies. While there was a bit of industry turmoil directly following those major updates, the industry pulled through as strong as ever due to the insight, creativity, and resourcefulness of its members. Wil Reynolds was one of these notable SEOs who, at Mozcon 2012, coined and shared his brainchild “#RCS” which has sinced gained massive popularity across Twitter and the blogosphere. Paul May of BuzzStream described RCS or Real Company Stuff best as being,

“bundle into three things: Community, Content and Campaigns, all pointed towards a well thought out content strategy.”

I believe it is a great philosophy and way of approaching SEO strategies, but as a long time forum and Twitter lurker, I think there is a bit TOO much RCS being thrown around. This leads me to the conclusion that not everyone realizes either what RCS really means, or how hard it is to achieve. While the effort and consideration to create better, astonishing ideas that convert for SEO efforts are leading the industry in a positive direction, there are a few things to keep in mind.

You were hired to get results, not waste money on “cool ideas.”

I for one always get a pain in my chest when I remind myself of what’s said above. Our primary responsibility as SEOs, to our company and our client (sometimes one and the same), is to create results that improve a company’s performance metrics. Before jumping into a long-term or in-depth strategy that checks off all of the RCS boxes (refresher: engaging, leading, educating, caring) keep in mind that quantifiable results are still necessary, if not the primary goal.

I have come across many ideas that are good and applicable for all of the aforementioned reasons, yet fail to have translatable SEO results. Coming up with great ideas is not the challenge; the challenge is being able to translate that idea and prove to yourself, your company, and the client that there is a tangible return on this investment. Sadly the internet can’t run on cat memes alone… right?

A perfect example of a creative idea that also had great translatable SEO results can be seen with American Express’ Small Business Saturday campaign. Re-occurring as a nationwide event for its third year only a few days ago, American Express has been able to connect with small businesses across the country and create a new nation-wide shopping trend, benefiting all parties involved tremendously. This isn’t just RCS, this is RCS on behalf of all the participating stores and communities. The intangible benefits of brand awareness and perception as well as the tangible sales results have been very successful so far. The very impressive backlink profile doesn’t hurt AmEX either, just see for yourself.

You must gain client trust before implementation.

While the issue of client-agency trust can be talked about in volumes, I wanted to highlight why trust is so important for a new SEO marketing technique. For a long time now many companies have had a misunderstanding of search marketing, and it seemed like many did not want to learn more about it as long as their SEO agencies brought in the results. While this attitude is currently changing for the better, we still have much work to do before SEO is fully understood and given the respect and budgets needed for effective RCS.

RCS strategies require that SEOs do something different from established, quick-win tactics, and it must be understood that the C-Suite will be a bit skeptical.

But, can we blame them?

When SEOs cannibalize their efforts by charging premium fees, leaving clients in the dark, and then get penalized, this kills the industry’s positive push towards credibility and legitimacy. It’s a bit like this trust fail:

Shallow search marketing practices of comment spam, paid links, and reciprocal link networks that set clients up for failure long-term make it less likely for future investment in “big ideas.” How many companies hit by poor past decisions are now being asked to spend a large amount of time, money, and resources for new results?

I would be a bit skeptical myself.

This is why cultivating a strong, trusting relationship between you and your client is so important not just to get new campaigns rolling, but to be able to have open and transparent communication. Not all companies will be willing to give the go-ahead for a new resource-intensive tactic without a solid foundation of trust. At Outspoken Media, we begin building this trust from day one, which allows us to have many great relationships and provide great Internet marketing services and results. It also gives us the privilege to speak openly with our clients and offer the very best we can.

RCS isn’t just about SEO strategy anymore.

As I said before, most successful RCS campaigns will be very resource-intensive, and it will not just be completed by an SEO. Sorry. RCS is not just about you or your job function alone. Think back to the traditional marketing you learned in school… and if you never learned or can’t remember that far back, then think back to the last episode of Mad Men you watched.

“Real Company Stuff” in essence is just a hip term for an integrated marketing strategy that focuses not on impressions, purchases, or brand awareness, but on organic link generation. If we are to shift towards creating strong integrated marketing campaigns, we have to stop thinking like link-builders and start thinking like traditional marketers (less focus on tactics, more focus on strategy). This transition in thought process may be hard for those stuck in their ways, but adaptation and change (thanks algorithm updates) are things that we excel at.

Acting with the bigger picture in mind allows SEOs to get large scale campaigns and projects pushed forward and see amazing results. It also forces us to understand that these bigger strategies will most likely require a green-light from the legal department and VP of Marketing, and at least, the input from development, social, PR, design, etc. The faster we learn to play well with others, the faster we can transition to successful integrated marketing campaigns.

As my awesome boss Rhea just discussed (I’ve linked twice now… go read it), the SEO industry IS maturing, and the push towards integrated marketing strategies is a perfect example of this. While the misunderstood will still throw around “#RCS” like it’s a hot buzzword, it is up to us to act and behave like the professional marketers we are. The time to be transparent and responsible is now–go out there and create an integrated marketing strategy that brings the incredible results it deserves.

Just remember to keep these three things in mind:

Quantifiable results are still the priority,

Strong client-agency trust is a necessity,

and you are not alone. Learn to get along with other company divisions, they can be your best friend or worst nightmare.

Agree, disagree, or have another great example of an SEO-focused integrated marketing strategy? Let me know in the comments below!

]]>http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/3-common-roadblocks-to-rcs/feed/9(Link)Build a Relationship in 15 Minutes a Dayhttp://outspokenmedia.com/seo/link-build-a-relationship-in-15-minutes-a-day/
http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/link-build-a-relationship-in-15-minutes-a-day/#commentsFri, 16 Nov 2012 16:57:24 +0000http://outspokenmedia.com/?p=16383Read More]]>Perhaps the newest buzzword in SEO is “relationship building.” It’s not about link building anymore-it’s about the relationship. And while I don’t disagree, it is very easy to start tab jumping or fall into Twitter and not accomplish what you wanted to in the first place: getting this person’s attention.

While there are numerous industry experts who have coveredthetopic extensively before, one of the most overriding statements is that relationship building “takes time.” Yes, it does, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t break it up into smaller chunks of time that don’t inadvertently consume your entire morning, or day, or week.
I’m here to offer you ways to build a relationship with your target in just 15 minutes a day. That’s right, 15 minutes. Put on your egg timer, or the alarm on your phone, or whatever you use to keep yourself on track. The team here at Outspoken Media can tell you I’m crazy deadline-driven/time-aware, so when I say 15 minutes, I do my darndest to mean it. While in sum, these strategies could eat up your day, this is my advice: choose one target a day to focus on, and use a few tactics. By the end of a month, you could potentially have 20+ relationships in the works. All for a measly 5 hours.

I’m going to present this from probably one of the hardest positions to work from-an in-house marketer, many of whom I work with every day. I am assuming there is no access to social media accounts (or at least not without a massive headache from legal or the social media team constantly asking “Why?”). All I am assuming is that there is a branded email that you have access to, and maybe that you can get content on your company blog, as, more often than not that is what I’ve seen in-house teams be able to easily access. As an agency SEO or consultant, these tactics are also still relevant and useful.

Initial Contact

Comment

Yes, commenting. Not comment spam purely for a followed link. Take two minutes and actually read a recent article (that may or may not be related to your company) and leave a thoughtful comment.

And just to clarify for those of you out there that may be wondering, no, I am not categorizing commenting on a person’s blog post as a link that would be reported to the boss or the CEO. All of these tactics are vehicles for the relationship (and link) that you want.

Email

While there are some people whose email inboxes are sacred; I’ve been pretty fearless personally with my own sites when conducting outreach, and had great success. It may not be the easiest thing to hear, but when you’re building a relationship, get rid of canned responses or templated emails.

Be charismatic and genuine (even if that means using improper grammar)

Use their language

Ask a question that doesn’t involve the words “guest post” at all

Respect Their Time

Do you like reading your email when you have 70 unread messages in your inbox?

No?!

Then don’t expect anyone else to, either. Take a guess based on the size of a given publication how busy whomever you contact is going to be and craft your message accordingly. The editor of a smaller, niche website may appreciate your long, gushy, email, but the editor of TechCrunch will not.

This also means not following up every two hours pestering them to see if they’ve read your email. Simple answer: No, they haven’t. They have a job. And a life.

Mentions

I’m not talking about tweets, re-tweets or Facebook shares, or even egobait, I’m just talking about simply mentioning (and linking) to whomever you’re interested in within a blog post on your company blog. A third of all the Internet is on WordPress-and WordPress allows Pingbacks. Chances are, if you mention a person in a blog post, they’ll notice.

Become a Contributor

Sometimes there will be sites that don’t accept guest posts because they are looking for more long-term writers. A lot of pure “link builders” have historically shyed away from opportunites like that because it would build a footprint (if said link builder was working from an unbranded persona) or because it was too much time invested when becoming a contriubutor to a site wouldn’t build diversity in linking domains or C-Blocks. But! For building a relationship, it’s a great opportunity. If it’s within the scope of your responsibilites and you can take on writing with the frequency they desire, do it.

Connect

This is yet another reason why going after irrelevant targets is a lost opportunity. When you’re looking at a site that is in the same industry you are in, you can talk shop with them! You both got into the industry for a reason – you both have a passion for it somewhere, somehow. Let that show!

Continuing Relationships

Follow Up

Follow up matters. While people have a life and don’t want to read an email, the flipside of that is: people have a life. Email clients break and lose emails. Sometimes things just get lost in the shuffle, nothing personal. Don’t be afraid to follow up-though usually I give it a week of hearing crickets before I send a second email. A week can be a long time in the world of an email inbox, so schedule yourself a reminder when you send the initial email, whether that’s using a plugin like Boomerang or setting a deadline on a task through Trello.

Referrals

This is more appropriate after you’ve been in communication with someone for a while, but again – you’re in the same industry, and if you’re doing it right, you’re reaching out to and talking with a LOT of people. If you’re in touch with a blogger who is working on a project and needs help, reach out to some of your own contacts on their behalf to see if they’d be interested in helping said blogger. You’ll generate goodwill both with the blogger and with everyone as a whole. When you help others out without expectation of something in return, it tends to work in your favor.

Rinse and Repeat

Just because you’ve gotten past the “getting to know you” phase, that doesn’t mean you should stop commenting, mentioning, emailing or connecting with them. Keep it going!

What quick things do you do to build relationships online?

]]>http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/link-build-a-relationship-in-15-minutes-a-day/feed/16Does Your Board of Directors Get SEO?http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/does-your-board-of-directors-get-seo/
http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/does-your-board-of-directors-get-seo/#commentsWed, 14 Nov 2012 17:52:43 +0000http://outspokenmedia.com/?p=16350Read More]]>Recently, I joined my first Board of Directors at Vanderheyden, a New York family services organization, and I was faced with the massive question of–what’s my role?! I knew that the organization needed help with social media and their web presence, but while pouring over meeting minutes on compliance, new client intake, real estate, budgets and more, I realized that the Board of Directors had a much larger responsibility–the care and well-being of the entire organization.

With the responsibility of a Board of Directors buzzing in my head, it’s no wonder that when a potential client recently reached out to Outspoken Media, something in their needs stood out. The client wanted a health check performed for their site, but not a standard SEO audit. They wanted a comprehensive link evaluation at the end of the year that would report on the overall health of the site’s link portfolio and approach. Link assessments (or audits) aren’t necessarily new, especially after a year of Penguin attacks, but this company has been diligent about having a check-up done annually for almost eight years! I’d wager that many of us don’t go to our doctors with that level of regularity, much less give the same professional opinion to our search marketing.

What was most impressive about this company was that the link evaluation was assigned by their Board of Directors!

Speaking on behalf of the entire Internet, we use “awesome” far too liberally in conversation, but I was genuinely awe-inspired by this decision from the client’s Board. It demonstrates a couple of things:

1) Responsibilities of Boards of Directors Have Grown

Does your company or do your clients have a Board of Directors or Board of Advisors? Does your Board have a system of accountability for your SEO efforts or do they even understand the web enough to comment? If they don’t and you have an online presence (which I assume you do since you’re reading Outspoken Media), they should be working to add a Board member with the skills needed to hold everyone more accountable to the health of such a vital marketing channel.

According to BoardSource, the Board of Directors has ten basic responsibilities (in their case speaking primarily for non-profit boards, but we can extend the example to corporate boards as well):

Determine the Organization’s Mission and Purpose

Select the Executive

Support the Executive and Review His or Her Performance

Ensure Effective Organizational Planning

Ensure Adequate Resources

Manage Resources Effectively

Determine and Monitor the Organization’s Products, Services and Programs

Enhance the Organization’s Public Image

Serve as a Court of Appeal

Assess Its Own Performance

Finding the right Board member who can be held accountable to these responsibilities and the specific needs of your organization or business is essential for responsible growth. Once the Board is in place, it’s your responsibility (as the business or organization) to educate them and give them the information they need to make informed decisions. Without your input, they cannot do an effective job. Once the Board has an understanding of the business model and threats to it, they can set up a system of checks and balances like the link evaluation. Unfortunately, this is a rare event.

At Pubcon 2012 I asked around to see how many SEOs had encountered this and no one had ever heard of it. A few of you were actually nervous about the prospect (I wonder why…). Other SEOs told me stories of Boards who were intimately aware of and involved with SEO, sometimes quite productively and profitably, but at other times with personal agendas and their favorite, quotable SEO personalities to parrot in the hopes of tripping up a well-intentioned in-house SEO. Regardless of each Board’s familiarity with SEO, the concept of an outside link evaluation wasn’t a fourth quarter budget requirement.

If your business relies on organic search performance for a significant portion of its livelihood and your Board of Directors cannot explain what search engine optimization or link building is, much less evaluate its performance, I suggest you find your Board in breach of their directorial duty. Or, to reiterate, educate them and add a Board member to the mix with the expertise needed to hold everyone accountable. Which brings me to my second observation about the Board requested link evaluation.

2) SEOs are Being Held Accountable

Please note, I did not say “agency or consultants,” but ALL SEOs. Whether you’re an in-house SEO, the VP of Digital Marketing, or client-facing, the fourth quarter link evaluation holds us accountable to our methods and approach, which in turn holds our bosses accountable for setting realistic expectations.

Search marketers know that unreasonable expectations are often be set by the higher ups in an organization when it comes to organic search. The actual results may not be unreasonable, but getting them done safely (e.g. through low-risk methods), within a given timeframe, and with all of the resources and buy-in you need to get the job done, can be next to impossible. This is when we see the decision to go high-risk get made. There’s pressure coming down from the boss to meet their goals, so we cut corners to hit an overly aggressive goal that should have been set with more care and internal education.

In other words–put pressure on an SEO and you don’t get a diamond, you get a big Google bitch slap because someone outsourced link development to the wrong company (or the right company, because they understood the risks, but will never stand by them when it’s time to file that reconsideration request and publicly out their link builder). The link evaluation holds the Board, President, VPs, in-house marketers and contractors accountable. Now, the responsibility lies with the Board of Directors to do something with this data to help prevent “yes sir” problems.

3) The SEO Industry is Maturing

My final observation from the link evaluation is that the SEO industry is maturing along with the modern Board. This was the common theme from MozCon and SMX East 2012–the SEO industry is becoming more established as a marketing solution. We can stop feeling like the confusing red-headed stepchild of the marketing world and put on our big girl pants. We aren’t magicians and car mechanics, we’re marketers, just like every other integrated marketing channel and we have metrics and goals to meet. We have tools that allow us to report on our progress. We have resources that help us educate our teams and decision makers. There are no more excuses for pretending like we’re the Wild West of the Internet. We’re grown, accept it and let’s up our game with more polished work and systems of accountability.

This is a post written from my heart after being truly impressed by our potential (soon current) client’s business model and the responsibility the Board of Directors feels for the success of the site’s performance. This is real and innovative stuff and more Board of Directors should be taking note. If your business relies on SEO for sales, do not accept a Board member who refuses to expand their knowledge of this area.

Is your Board of Directors doing enough? Not sure? Send them this post!

Think your Board is the bee’s knees? Tell me why in the comments below. I would love to find more positive examples of amazing Boards actively involved in SEO and online marketing.

]]>http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/does-your-board-of-directors-get-seo/feed/6Wait, why are you measuring that?http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/wait-why-are-you-measuring-that/
http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/wait-why-are-you-measuring-that/#commentsTue, 18 Sep 2012 16:54:01 +0000http://outspokenmedia.com/?p=15751Read More]]>Ryan Jones is a wicked smart SEO who works with SapientNitro and rants on his personal blog (dotCult) about all things SEO, Penguin, and analytics. He’s one of the most “outspoken” marketers we know and Rhea will be moderating a panel with Ryan at the upcoming SMX East conference, October 2nd-4th in Manhattan. We hope to see you there! In the meantime, Ryan shares what you should be measuring and why.

When somebody comes to me asking for data I always ask the same questions: Why? What are you going to do with it? I don’t enjoy giving people a hard time [too much] and I’m not [that] lazy. I just want to make sure that they’re asking the right questions and answering them with the right data.

If you take one lesson away from this rant, let it be this: If you’re not asking questions, you’re not providing as much value as you could be. Chances are you were hired for your expertise, experience, knowledge, and insights – not simply your ability to sort numbers in excel. The person asking you for data has expertise, experience, knowledge, and insights too – but if it’s not in your field then it’s your job to ask these questions and ensure you provide them with the right data to make the right decisions.

A good analyst needs to understand not only what they’re measuring but why they’re measuring it too. Proper analysis demands it.

It’s not enough to just measure what’s easily measureable; we also need a reason for measuring it. If there was a formula for increasing web sales our jobs would be easy, but there isn’t. The closest we come is that dreaded correlation word everybody keeps throwing around. When we apply statistics to our website data we can get an idea of things that correlate highly with sales. We can then focus on increasing or optimizing those “things.” It’s here that lots of companies run into trouble. I’d like to use hypothetical (but based on a true story) example to illustrate just what can happen when people don’t ask why.

Imagine the following scenario: (Note: I’m making this up, but I see this type of thinking all the time.)

A senior executive learns (correctly) that Youtube views correlate highly to sales.The latest correlation data says so. The executive sends out the order but only includes the ‘what’ without the ‘why.’ “Hey, get us more Youtube views. They’re important,” he bellows, and his words echo throughout the company. Wanting to impress their boss, managers incorporate Youtube views into their bonus metrics and make them a priority.

Fast forward a few weeks and suddenly paid search ads are now pointing to Youtube instead of the company website. The company homepage is driving people to Youtube instead of into the shopping cart. Product features and testimonials have been replaced with embedded Youtube videos. Youtube video descriptions now call out more videos from the company. Sales are down and mid-level managers are screaming that we obviously need more Youtube views.

It sounds absurd, but I’ve actually seen this exact scenario happen at some very large companies (thankfully, not so much within my company.) Go ahead and substitute Youtube views with facebook likes, pagerank, mozrank, alexa rank, twitter followers, retweets, reviews, ratings,plus ones, links, diggs, sphinns, or any other easily to measure number you prefer – it doesn’t change the story. Do you see the underlying issue? The problem is, it’s easy to focus so much on what to measure that we often forget about why we’re measuring it in the first place.

This is quite common in large corporations where departments are siloed and it’s easy for people to focus on their own goals rather than the company’s best interests, but it can happen within smaller companies too – usually when people stop asking “why?” (Pro Tip: your bonus is nice but your salary pays more – focus on optimizing that.)

Ok, back to the story. Our executive was right. Youtube views did correlate highly with sales, but let’s remember that correlation doesn’t imply causation. (Seriously, SEOs, please understand that point.) Just because two things are correlated doesn’t mean that one causes the other. It’s important to understand why Youtube views correlate with sales. For this, we need to go back to our Marketing 101 sales funnel. It kind of looks like this:

Awareness, Interest (or consideration), Desire, Action. There’s probably 200 other versions of the sales funnel but we’ll stick with this one. I want to focus on the top of the funnel. That’s where metrics like Youtube views, Facebook likes, and even many of your advertising campaigns fall. They’re what we call “High Funnel Activities” or “HFAs” for short. The nice thing about HFAs is that they often lead to LFAs (Lower Funnel Activities.) Both HFAs and LFAs are subclasses of KPIs but we’ll cover all of that in Marketing 201 next semester. For those who are still taking Marketing 101, the marketing funnel actually works just like that funnel at the top of your beer bong; the more you fill the top the more that comes out at the bottom. Theoretically, increased awareness leads to increased action – except that didn’t happen in our above example. Why not?

In our example we were so focused on ensuring that the top of the funnel was full that we forgot about the bottom. Instead of pouring more into it, we just stuck a cork in the bottom. The top stayed full and we hit our awareness goals, but only because we trapped customers in the awareness stage and wouldn’t let them leave. In the real world, it’s quite similar to replacing the cash register with a sales pitch. Customers are standing in line with money in their hands and instead of taking it you’re telling them how awesome your product is. Stop talking and let them buy it.

It may sound extreme, but I’ll reiterate that I’ve seen several companies face this exact issue in the past. They didn’t understand why things were correlated so they couldn’t properly use that correlation to their advantage.

Analytics isn’t about compiling numbers. That’s called reporting and it can be automated (or assigned to interns.) Real analytics involve insight. Analysts need to understand not only what is happening but why it’s happening and what we should do about it. That’s called actionable reporting and if you’re interested in that you won’t want to miss the performance SEO metrics session featuring me (@ryanjones) @rhea, @vanessafox, and @statrob at SMX east next month.

In the meantime, here are some tips for succeeding with analytics:

Just because something is easy to measure doesn’t mean it should be measured. Make sure you understand why you’re measuring it.

Correlation is NOT causation. In fact, optimizing one side of the equation may actually change the correlation.

Understand your goals first, THEN pick metrics that line up with those goals. DON’T establish goals based on metrics.

Don’t miss the forest behind the trees. Look at all your metrics together to tell the complete story.